Fred Foldvary — The Evil of Zoning

Fred Foldvary’s Editorial

The Evil of Zoning

by Fred E. Foldvary, Senior Editor

Zoning is a command by government to use land in a particular way. When a city government zones land as residential, it is illegal to carry out commercial activities there, such as doing business inside one’s home. It can even be illegal to hold religious meetings in someone’s house. Related to zoning are land-use laws and permit requirements that arbitrarily limit what the owner may legally do, and impose costs in addition to regular taxation.

Zoning is often used to limit economic growth. Cities mandate controls on population density, it being illegal to have more people per acre or hectare than the legal maximum. This adds to urban sprawl and also prevents low-income people from obtaining housing. Zoning prevents converting single-family dwellings to apartments or other higher-density residences.

Zoning is an example of privilege seeking, when the property owners of a neighborhood seek to exclude particular types of land use from their area. Instead of buying this benefit, they use government force to deprive others of benefits and obtain an implicit subsidy.

Historically, zoning is a rather recent intervention. The first comprehensive zoning law was enacted in New York City in 1916. Now almost all cities in the USA have zoning, but Houston, Texas, has been a notable major exception.

The alternative to zoning is covenants, or contracts among property owners. Residential associations often have covenants in which the members agree to adhere to particular rules, such as keeping the front yards from going to weeds. Often, a developer builds a community with a harmonious style of architecture, which covenants later preserve. Anyone moving in needs to sign the community contract explicitly agreeing to the master deed and bylaws.

An illustration of the evil that zoning is capable of occurred in Fairfax County, Virginia, as reported by Vin Suprynowicz in The Libertarian, April 8. The county government developed a golf course near a private golf driving range owned by John Thoburn. The government operation took away one-third of his business, but the main problem was with the zoning.

According to his guest column in the Washington Post, March 15, 2001, to get the occupancy permit, Thoburn planted over 700 trees around the range at a cost of $125,000. But the Fairfax County government now demands that 98 trees be moved to different locations, despite prior inspections and approvals.

The berm, a ledge separating Thoburn’s facility from the Dulles Toll Road, is subject to two contradictory zoning conditions requiring two different heights, and the Fairfax County officials refuse to say which berm height they want. Also, they haven’t told Thoburn exactly which trees need to be moved.

Thoburn wrote, “This zoning harassment has been going on for years. One zoning regulation … allows a ‘snack food concession.’ Yet Fairfax County issued a zoning violation for selling hot dogs and Cokes. They say we can sell pre-wrapped roast beef deli sandwiches, but not microwave hot dogs. We can sell Coca-Cola in a bottle or can, but not in a cup. Meanwhile my competitors, the Fairfax County golf facilities, have carte blanche from the county to sell beer and pizza.”

Post Metro columnist Marc Fisher reported (March 22) that the county did not require itself to plant hundreds of trees or build massive berms, and the county did permit itself to offer putting greens and miniature golf, neither of which Thoburn is allowed to offer. When Thoburn last year balked at spending another $30,000 to move 98 trees which the county says are in the wrong location, he was ordered to close. He refused, was taken to court, held in contempt, and has been imprisoned in the Fairfax County Jail until he shuts his business or plants the trees. The county has also continues to assess him fines of $1,000 per day.

In his press release, Vin Suprynowicz says, “The nature of a thing is best judged by its fruit, and the evil fruit of planning and zoning is a law-abiding family man like John Thoburn sitting in prison while his wife and children flee the local jurisdiction in terror, for all the world like terrified Lincolnshire peasants fleeing the soldiers of Prince John.

“The solution here is not merely to urge the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to back off in this particular case, while tens of thousands of other American property owners see their rights and freedoms similarly stripped away in slightly less outrageous pick-and-rolls every day.”

The solution to the evil done by such confiscation of property and denial of liberty by all levels of government must be an amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America to repeal all zoning laws, building codes, land-use restrictions, and permit costs and delays regarding enterprise and real estate. Only the absolute and total eradication of this government power will prevent arbitrary restrictions and costs from creeping back in.

Instead of forced zoning, there can and should be voluntary agreements among people, with covenants, easements, and community master deeds. If you want to benefit by restricting your neighbor’s use of property, you should compensate him.

People are morally owed compensation for the benefits given up when some have exclusive control of land, but that benefit can and should be paid as a rent to the community, rents that also serve as the prime source of public revenue. Paying rent to the community is the efficient and equitable way to pay for and receive benefits from land. Once the rent is paid, then the title holder should have complete rights of possession, free to do with his land whatever is peaceful and honest.

What is your opinion? Share it with The Progress Report!Copyright 2001 by Fred E. Foldvary. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, which includes but is not limited to facsimile transmission, photocopying, recording, rekeying, or using any information storage or retrieval system, without giving full credit to Fred Foldvary and The Progress Report.

We are Hanno Beck, Lindy Davies, Fred Foldvary, Mike O'Mara, Jeff Smith, and assorted volunteers, all dedicated to bringing you the news and views that make a difference in our species struggle to win justice, prosperity, and eco-librium.

One Response to Fred Foldvary — The Evil of Zoning

Great Story Fred, my neighborhood is in the middle of being forced to additional restrictions and building guidelines. We do not have a homeowners association and most of the property owners do not want this “protection” by the City. I’m researching information for my attorney so we can file a formal protest.
Any comments?

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Arts & Letters

Geonomics is …

what you do when you see economies as part of the ecosystem, following feedback loops and storing up energy. Surplus energy – fat or profit – enables us to produce and reproduce. To recycle society’s surplus, the commonwealth, geonomics would replace taxes with land dues (charged to users of sites and resources, including the EM spectrum, and extra to polluters), and replace subsidies with rent dividends to citizens (a la Alaska’s oil dividend). Without taxes and subsidies to distort them, prices become precise, reflect accurately our costs and values; then, motivated by no more than the bottom line, both producers and consumers make sustainable choices. While no place uses geonomics in its entirety, some places use parts of it, most notably a shift of the property tax off buildings, onto locations. Shifting the property tax drives efficient use of land, in-fills cities, improves the housing stock, makes homes affordable, engenders jobs and investment opportunities, lowers crime, raises civic participation, etc – overall it makes cities more livable. Geonomics – a way to share the bounty of nature and society – is something we can work for locally, globally, and in between.

a way to have everybody pulling on the same end of the rope. Last summer’s expansive forest fires shed light on growing class resentment in the West. Old log-gers and ranchers rankled at the new urgency to stamp out the blazes that threatened the recent Aspenesque settlers. The newcomers expected working class firemen to make protecting their expensive homes top priority. (Chr Sci Mntr, Spt 7) The tinder for this envy? Rich people moving in bid up the price of land, making it hard to afford by people on the margin. The fault really lies with our system of privatizing land value. If this rising value were collected by land dues and shared by rent dividends – the essence of geonomic policy – who’d complain? The more people move in, the higher the land value, and the fatter the dividend paid to residents. Then people on the margin might go out of their way to invite rich outsiders in.

more transformation than reform; it’s a step ahead. Harvard economics students this year did petition to change the curriculum, in the wake of the English who caught the dissension from across The Channel. French reformers, who fault conventional economics for conjuring mathematical models of little empirical relevance and being closed to critical and reflective thought, reject this “autism” – or detachment from reality – and dub their offering “post-autistic economics”. Not a bad name, but again, academics define themselves by what they’re not, not by what they are, unlike geonomists. We track rent – the money we spend on the nature we use – and watch it pull all the other economic indicators in its wake. We see economies as part of the ecosystem, similarly following natural patterns and able to self-regulate more so than allowed, once we quit distorting prices. To align people and planet, we’d replace taxes and subsidies with recovering and sharing rents.

a neologism for sharing “rent” or “social surplus” – the money we spend on the nature we use. When we buy land, such as the land beneath a home, we typically pay the wrong person – the homeowner. Instead, since land cost us nothing to make and is the common heritage of us all, rather than pay the owner, we should pay ourselves, our neighbors, our community. That is, we should all pay land dues to the public treasury, then our government would pay us land dividends from this collected revenue. It’s similar to the Alaska oil dividend, almost $2,000 last year. Indeed, the annual rental value of land, oil, all other natural resources, including the broadcast spectrum and other government-granted permits such as corporate charters, totals several trillion dollars each year. It’s so much that some could be spent on basic social services, the rest parceled out as a dividend, as Tom Paine suggested, and taxes (except any on natural rents) could be abolished, as Thomas Jefferson suggested. Were we sharing Earth by sharing her worth, territorial disputes would be fewer, less intense, and more resolvable.

an answer for Jonathan of the Green Party (Nov 7): “What does ‘share our surplus’ mean?”
Our surplus is the values that society generates synergistically. It’s the money we spend on the nature we use: on land sites, natural resources, EM spectrum, ecosystem services (assimilating pollutants). It’s also the money we pay to holders of government-granted privileges like corporate charters. We could share it by paying for the nature we use and privileges we hold to the public treasury then getting back a fair share of the recovered revenue. Used to be, owners did owe rent (“own” and “owe” used to be one word). And presently, some lucky residents do get back periodic dividends: Alaska’s oil dividend and Aspen Colorado’s housing assistance. Doing that, instead of subsidizing bads while taxing goods, is the essence of geonomics.
Jonathan: “Is local currency what you mean?”Editor: It’s not. Community currency is a good reform, but every good reform pushes up site values. That makes land an even more tempting object of speculation. Now, any good will eventually do bad by widening the income gap – until you share land values.

a manual. The world did not come without a way for people to prosper, and the planet to heal and stay well; that way is geonomics. Economies are part of the ecosystem. Both generate surpluses and follow self-regulating feedback loops. A cycle like the Law of Supply and Demand is one of the economy’s on/off loops. Our spending for land and resources – things that nobody made and everybody needs – constitutes our society’s surplus. Those profits without production (remember, nobody produced Earth) can become our commonwealth. To share it, we could pay land dues in to the public treasury (wouldn’t oil companies love that?) and get rent dividends back, a la Alaska’s oil dividend. Doing so let’s us axe taxes and jettison subsidies. Taxes and subsidies distort price (the DNA of exchange), violate quid pro quo by benefiting the well-connected more than anyone else, reinforce hierarchy of state over citizen, and are costly to administer (you don’t really need so much bureaucracy, do you?). Conversely, land dues motivate people to not waste sites, resources, and the ecosystem while rent dividends motivate people to not waste themselves. Receiving this income supplement – a Citizens Dividend – people can invest in their favorite technology or outgrow being “economan” and shrink their overbearing workweek in order to enjoy more time with family, friends, community, and nature. Then in all that free time, maybe we could figure out just what we are here for.

an answer for Jonathan of the Green Party (Nov 7): “What does ‘share our surplus’ mean?”Our surplus is the values that society generates synergistically. It’s the money we spend on the nature we use: on land sites, natural resources, EM spectrum, ecosystem services (assimilating pollutants). It’s also the money we pay to holders of government-granted privileges like corporate charters. We could share it by paying for the nature we use and privileges we hold to the public treasury then getting back a fair share of the recovered revenue. Used to be, owners did owe rent (“own” and “owe” used to be one word). And presently, some lucky residents do get back periodic dividends: Alaska’s oil dividend and Aspen Colorado’s housing assistance. Doing that, instead of subsidizing bads while taxing goods, is the essence of geonomics.
Jonathan: “Is local currency what you mean?”
Editor: It’s not. Community currency is a good reform, but every good reform pushes up site values. That makes land an even more tempting object of speculation. Now, any good will eventually do bad by widening the income gap – until you share land values.

a way to redirect all the money we spend on the nature we use – trillions of dollars annually. We can’t pay the Creator of sites and resources and are mistaken to pay their owners this biggest stream in our economy. Instead, as owners we should pay our neighbors for respecting our claims to land. Owners could pay in land dues to the public treasury, a la Sydney Australia’s land tax, and residents could get back a “rent” dividend, a la Alaska’s oil dividend. We’d pay for owning sites, resources, EM spectrum, or emitting pollutants into the ecosphere, then get a fair share of the recovered revenue. The economy would finally have a thermostat, the dividend. When it’s small, people would work more; when it’s big, they’d work less. Sharing Earth’s worth, we could jettison counterproductive taxes and addictive subsidies. Prices would become precise; things like sprawl, sprayed food, gasoline engines, coal-burning plants would no longer seem cheap; things like compact towns, organic foods, fuel cells, and solar powers would become affordable. Getting shares, people could spend their expanded leisure socializing, making art, enjoying nature, or just chilling. Economies let us produce wealth efficiently; geonomics lets us share it fairly.

as unfamiliar as geo-economics. The latter is a course some universities offer that combines geography and economics. A UN newsletter, Go Between (57, Apr/May ’96; thanks, Pat Aller), cited an Asian conference on geopolitics and “geoeconomics”. The abbreviated term ‘geonomics” is the name of an institute on Middlebury College campus and of a show on CNBC. Both entities use the neologism to mean “global economics”, in particular world trade. We use geonomics entirely differently, to refer to the money people spend on the nature they use, how letting this flow collect in a few pockets creates class and poverty and assaults upon the environment, and how, on the other hand, sharing this rental flow creates equality, prosperity, and a people/planet harmony. This flow of natural rent, several trillions dollars in the US each year, shapes society and belongs to society.

a way to connect the dots. Making the cyber rounds is “The Cavernous Divide” by Scott Klinger, from AlterNet (posted March 21): “As the number of billionaires in the world expands, so does the number of those in poverty.” Duh. The yawning income gap is not news. Nearly every issue of our quarterly digest carries a similar quote. Yet the connection was worked out long ago by one of America’s greatest thinkers, Henry George, who labeled his masterpiece, Progress and Poverty. Techno- and socio-advances always enrich few and impoverish many. Yet progress also pushes up location values – the geonomic insight (is Silicon Valley cheaper now or more expensive?). Instead of taxing income, sales, or buildings, society could collect those values of sites, resources, EM spectrum, and ecosystem services via fees and dues, which would lower the income ceiling, and instead of lavishing corporate welfare, pay out the recovered revenue via dividends, which would jack up the income floor. Dots connected.

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Meister Eckhart

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I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have gotten hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before passing it to future generations.

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